June 6th, WHITE WATER RAFTING

Today was probably the highlight of the trip for most people. Early at 7:30 am we left the jungle lodge and drove to Tena, a city 20 min away from the lodge. We had breakfast in Tena and met our two guides for the rafting tour, Gino and George, as well as a girl from Australia who wanted to join us for the rafting. In two pick up trucks we left Tena to drive upstream the Rio Jatunyacu, which means "big river" in Kichua (the local language). After 45 min we stoppped and our guides unloaded the rafts and gave us our equipment, which consisted of helmets, paddles, life vests and a wet suit shirt. We had two rafts with eight people in each including a guide and a safety kayaker.
Gino was the guide in my raft and he taught us the different commands - forward, backward, sit on one side, and attack the other raft! We also learned how to float on the river in a safe position. The water looked really clean and was refreshing. As soon as we hit the first rapid everyone was thrown around in the raft and in the second rapid lightweight Chelsea was washed away. It was a lot of fun and everyone eventually fell into the river.
After about an hour and a half and a short break we had a longer stop. While lunch was prepared we played some games on the beach to warm up. We had to run as fast as we could, we crawled through the sand (and ate some), and we formed an enormous human knot that had to be untied. Then lunch was served by our guides. We had Ecaduadorian style burritos, fresh pineapple, watermelon and cookies.
Back on the river it got serious. We passed intense rapids and people fell out left and right. At one point our raft flipped. The safety kayaker always made sure we got our paddles back and helped people until they could get back into the raft. Measured on the "International Scale of River Difficulty" the part of the Rio Jatunyacu we were rafting on was classified as 3 out of 6, where 6 is impossible to raft on. Our raft went more difficult ways, so we did at least 3 and 1/2...
On passages without rapids our guide Gino made sure with his games that we all got into the water. When we got to the final stopping point everyone was sad it was over, but everyone had a smile on their face because it had been so much fun.
Of course our main focus during the rafting had been on how the Inkas managed to use the river as a means of transportation. I felt very sorry that they didn't have the fancy rafts we do now; they really missed out on a lot of fun;)